Trouble Tightening Brake Springs

Yesterday what I thought would be a 20 minute job ended up taking over an hour. Clearly there must be a method that I couldn't figure out.

The task was to rotate the little plastic blocks on the springs on both of my Ultegra brakes which increases the spring tension on the brakes...sounds simple. After using multiple sizes of pliers and scratching up the undersides of the brakes and the plastic blocks, I was "successful."